Police #2: Burning down the house

[Soylent Brown]

1 hour ago, Conflicting Thought said:

There is no thing as the police??, that is the first time i hear that, so they are just individuals that happend to be police?.  With no context? 

Would you agree that there are systemic issues with the police?, with the system that the state uses to coerce the people? 

If the problems with the police are systemic, then how is it not a problem with the police as an institution?. 

 

I would assume BFC is saying that the police force isn't a single homogenous entity, so treating it as such isn't especially useful. Which is not the same as saying there aren't major problems.

[Conflicting Thought]

35 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

I would assume BFC is saying that the police force isn't a single homogenous entity, so treating it as such isn't especially useful. Which is not the same as saying there aren't major problems.

It is a single entity with, like systems work, different parts, that form the entity(i dont know how you write "form a hole?) and this entity has systemic problems, if you are a part of that entity you are a part of the system that has those problems. 

And i think  it is usefull to talk about the police as a (whole?, hole? Idk) when you want to change the system from the ground up. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

Well, looks like the Buffalo police are throwing a hissy fit in response to be held the slightest bit responsible for their bullshit. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/buffalo/public-safety/2020/06/05/buffalo-police-officers-resign-from-emergency-response-team

I always kinda wondered what it felt like to get radicalized, and now its happening in real time to me.

I hope they are fired for defending those officers.

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It was all the BIRDS! fault! 

I confess.

[A True Kaniggit]

7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I confess.

Negative.

Never confess!

Was your lawyer present when they questioned you?

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Negative.

Never confess!

Was your lawyer present when they questioned you?

What's a bird to do?

[A True Kaniggit]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

What's a bird to do?

Peck. Peck like your civil liberties depended on it!

Shit. Do us birds even have civil liberties?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So I passed out a few hours ago. I really need to stop watching boring T.V. while lying on my bed. 

Am I seeing this right that a ton of Buffalo police officers quit, not because the old man was attacked, but because the cops that attacked the old man are being suspended? 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

“I always knew this was happening in my own backyard,” Solomon Harrison, 30, told The Daily Beast. “And the fact that it happened to a 75-year-old white man kinda solidified the specific violence and hatred or the disdain or whatever it is that cops feel towards the people in general.”

J Coley, 28, has been protesting for social justice issues for years but took a break from it and had not taken to the streets after Floyd’s death—until seeing the video of Gugino hitting the concrete.

“I was like OK, I need to go out,” said Coley, who brought water and face masks for fellow demonstrators.

“I thought if they would do this to a 75-year-old white man, they would absolutely do it to me and everyone that I love. So I need to be out here.”

 

Every Buffalo Cop in Elite Unit Quits to Back Officers Who Shoved Elderly Man to Ground
A video showed the 75-year-old man was left bleeding from his ear after being pushed to the ground.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/buffalo-cops-quit-elite-unit-to-back-officers-who-shoved-martin-gugino-to-ground-report-says?ref=home

[Martell Spy]

16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So I passed out a few hours ago. I really need to stop watching boring T.V. while lying on my bed. 

Am I seeing this right that a ton of Buffalo police officers quit, not because the old man was attacked, but because the cops that attacked the old man are being suspended? 

I wonder how long police immunity will last if they keep attacking white people and cheering about it? Not very smart to send a message that no one is safe from them.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I wonder how long police immunity will last if they keep attacking white people and cheering about it? Not very smart to send a message that no one is safe from them.

It's always amazed me that the standards are low for the police than the people they're paid to protect and serve.

[A True Kaniggit]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's always amazed me that the standards are low for the police than the people they're paid to protect and serve.

I blame the movie Black Hawk Down. 

[Martell Spy]

5 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I blame the movie Black Hawk Down. 

If only it turned out like Police Academy.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is clearly at the start of everything that goes wrong. 

[Zorral]

Older African Americans I know, Church People, have been emailing to me about this event constantly.  Their hearts are broken by this as much as by everything else these evile cops are doing with impunity and immunity.

And ... I have nothing to say to help them understand this any better than they already do.  I have no words to help.

[Fury Resurrected]

7 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Ok, but same questions remain. How is destroying corporate property justified reaction to racism in America? How exactly will looting Arby's or T-Mobile make America a more fair society? How does vandalizing a gas station help extract justice for George Floyd? 

And war crimes analogy was fitting, I think. I've seen people excuse all kinds of horrific behavior - murders, rapes, evictions, exile, labour camps etc. - as long as the perpetrator is "one of us" and is "fighting for a just cause". Is property damage here in rang with abovementioned crimes? - no. But it it has the same dangerous mentality feeding it,
 

False dichotomy. It's entirely possible to oppose police brutality without condoning hooligans bent on property destruction. And the only reason I condemned looters and not police violence is because former is apparently a matter to debate, while the latter is just common sense. I thought it's way too obvious to even mention.

As for the rest of your post...look, I'm not your opponent here. I wish you good luck, truly, and hope you'll manage to achieve some long-lasting positive change in Minneapolis, and in USA. However, you did allow some very destructive and unnecessary elements into your (just) cause that you'd be better off without.

For one - because it's very hard to condemn e.g. police brutality or alt-right violence while at the same time justifying violence from the opposite side of spectrum. Your idea basically boils down to "violence is awesome, but only if my side is doing it".

And secondly - because humanity has worked long and hard to establish a society where problems will get solved without a violence (cos frankly, living in a country where you have to start a war/revolution to change anything - sucked). It established government, courts, parliament, media, independent organizations, voting system etc. Living in the 21st century democracy, one gets a pretty clear picture of what to do in order to change something: vote in elections, join a organization and lobby for your cause, organize a protest, make yourself heard on media etc. And frankly - here it works - and believe me when I say my country is not a model country by any stretch of imagination. But despite that, peaceful and democratic means of changing stuff work. Just a year ago, there were big country-wide protests demanding better laws for violence against women (and the immediate cause was year-long gang-rape of one underage girl. Yeah...we were as riled up as you can imagine). And despite people being pissed and angry, protest successfully achieved its goal without single broken window, much less demolished building. That's just one example out of many. That's how I see stuff should work in modern democracies.

From what I gather from your post, you believe such a approach wouldn't work in America, and that only way to ever achieve anything is though violence. If that's true, then...well, then America is even more fucked up that I thought. It means it hasn't gotten past this primitive assumption that society is made of of various groups beating each other with sticks - and the group with the biggest stick gets to have its way. As long as this principle is correct, you'll continue to have same kinds of problem over and over again.

No, I condemn violence against human bodies and I care extremely little about destruction of property. Like almost not at all. My traditional native teachings are such that I don’t even really believe in the concept of property, if I am being entirely honest. 
 

I get where your ideals coming from and that’s all well and good and Id be right there with you if the generations of peaceful protest on this matter made 10% of the progress that smashing a few Targets and Arby’s has. It has not.

I can’t even believe you went there about violence against women because newsflash- I’m a fucking woman. And it is almost 100% legal for a white man to rape me if I happen to be on the Rez (where I am camping right now! Scary!) because of racist laws prohibiting tribal police from prosecuting felony level crimes committed by white people on the Rez. Technically the feds CAN take jurisdiction but they do not, and that’s why we have a continent wide epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. That’s still the case today. 51% of native women are victims of rape (and unfortunately I didn’t get to be part of the 49% here) That women’s march didn’t do fucking anything to keep me safe. Neither did any of the MMIW marches. And when my ex beat the shit out of me and sexually assaulted me IN PUBLIC in front of dozens of witnesses and threatened the lives of my pets and put his own head through the wall into the neighboring apartment- guess how many days he spent in jail? It’s zero. He wasn’t arrested at all. I was given and OFP that they did nothing at all to enforce when he broke it.  So don’t go trying to tell me all the good those peaceful demonstrations by women have done. 
 

Edited to add- I, as an indigenous woman (even if I was only one or the other and not both at once) have fewer rights and less public outcry for my safety THAN A FUCKING ARBY’S DRIVE THROUGH.

[karaddin]

Yup, as far as I'm concerned the last week and a half has settled that argument. If the protests are destroying property, not harming people (unlike the police), and they're getting results against massive injustice that years/decades of peaceful protests did not then the moral argument is already decided for me.

As I've seen it said either on Twitter or earlier in the thread - if every time cops murdered a black person their precinct was burnt down in response, we'd probably see a lot less police murders.

[Fury Resurrected]

5 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Yup, as far as I'm concerned the last week and a half has settled that argument. If the protests are destroying property, not harming people (unlike the police), and they're getting results against massive injustice that years/decades of peaceful protests did not then the moral argument is already decided for me.

As I've seen it said either on Twitter or earlier in the thread - if every time cops murdered a black person their precinct was burnt down in response, we'd probably see a lot less police murders.

And I, for one, hope it catches on. Let’s burn a location of a multi billion dollar corporation every time one of or native or trans sisters gets murdered, too.
 

As long as people exist who have fewer protections and less recourse than property, attacking property will be a valid form of protest and you cannot convince me otherwise.

[Fury Resurrected]

I just can’t stop scoffing. We have rapists in the White House and on the Supreme Court. GOOD THING THAT WOMENS MARCH HAS ME COVERED!

[A True Kaniggit]

4 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

If only it turned out like Police Academy.

 

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is clearly at the start of everything that goes wrong. 

Right? How hard is it to risk a little bit of your own life so you don't kill an innocent who was no danger to you in the first place?